The hour badly spent

Saturday night, 7:15 right outside the Purple Masque Theatre. All the slackers who hadn’t bought advance tickets were waitlisted. There was me, Smallville, and about ten other people. The Hipster Grey Lady walked by, with her super-sexy already-having-a-ticket, dressed-like-a-soror self. In the hall, three hipsters started announcing a list of American foods shaped like dicks.

"Hot dogs."

"Popsicles."

"Candy bars," I chimed in.

The hipster with the pink scarf had watched Amish Paradise earlier today. The short hipster with the white scarf started talking about the next performance coming up in her drama class.

"There’s one female part. It’s gonna go to Shelby. Everyone knows."

Finally, the hipsters’ convo was getting interesting. But I needed more perspective. I needed an insider.

The Hour Badly Spent: Is there a drama student named Shelby who is annoyingly popular?
Super Hipster Grey Lady: Maybe a freshman. Idk her.

7:36 pm. The ticketmistress called up the first two names on the waiting list: a Megan and an Anne. "We’re all sold out," she announced. So what was the play actually like?

The Hour Badly Spent: meh. shoulda got ticks in advance. learned my lesson
Super Hipster Grey Lady: right.
Super Hipster Grey Lady: still wish you could have seen it tho
The Hour Badly Spent: it was good, wasn’t it?
Super Hipster Grey Lady: i thought so. although you would have been irked by the accents in it.
The Hour Badly Spent: what nationality were the accents?
Super Hipster Grey Lady: most were awesome. but two didn’t have it at all.
Super Hipster Grey Lady: and it took you out big time.
Super Hipster Grey Lady: northern england accents
The Hour Badly Spent: ah
The Hour Badly Spent: i was hoping you’d say russian or something
The Hour Badly Spent: i also wish it were running next weekend
Super Hipster Grey Lady: yeah… that’s how i feel about noises off. i can’t see it
Super Hipster Grey Lady: although, on a side note, the show reminded me why i’m not a theater major
The Hour Badly Spent: oh?
Super Hipster Grey Lady: i’m just too fat.
The Hour Badly Spent: oh christ. wasn’t juliet kinda pudgy, in romeo & juliet last april?
Super Hipster Grey Lady: no. she’s really petite. then. she’s preggers now. i was joking. but they were really tiny. and in their underwear on stage.
The Hour Badly Spent: FUCKFUCKFUCK i can’t believe i missed that
Super Hipster Grey Lady: haha they looked hot.
Super Hipster Grey Lady: pregger juliet was at the show tongiht too
The Hour Badly Spent: she’s with child? [ed. note: Yes, I talk like a dumbass.]
Super Hipster Grey Lady: in her tummy. yes
Super Hipster Grey Lady: its rather large now
The Hour Badly Spent: "The kid is not my son."
Super Hipster Grey Lady: yes. thank you.

No, Grey Lady; thank YOU!

Super Hipster Grey Lady: also…with the girl talking about parts for theater cast, the only theater class that casts is fundies of acting and that’s mainly all non-majors.
Super Hipster Grey Lady: there’s a few but they are likely to be freshman. and not nearly as importnant as they’d like to make themselves sound.
Super Hipster Grey Lady: i can say that since i’m a sophmore, you know.

I’ve felt brain dead all week. Perhaps it was the changing weather? Perhaps I shouldn’t have started the week with Modernist poetry.

"I’m gonna memorize Prufrock," I said. Smallville rolled her eyes. I saw that coming. So did Prufrock.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all–
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

I’ve also been reading White Teeth, and I fear Zadie Smith’s “manic” prose has made mince meat of my brain.

Monday I missed an article deadline and an assignment deadline in playwriting, which set the tone for the rest of my classes. So it goes. I skipped class Tuesday and didn’t have class Wednesday. I returned to White Teeth. I’d read it for fun years ago, but this time, ugh. Not til I had marked up half the book did I remember that my copy was actually borrowed from Cherry. As a woman of integrity, she has most likely stayed true to her promise not to read The Hour Badly Spent any more, so I might be in the clear, but if not, uhh, sorry about that. I don’t know what I did Tuesday or Wednesday, so it couldn’t have been anything special. Both days, perhaps, interchangeable?

For I have known them all already, known them all:–
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Except not quite. There is, in fact, so much to do, pages to read, calories to burn, lessons to learn, paragraphs to write, concepts to master, and never nearly enough coffee spoons to measure it all.

The afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

A life of leisure. A guy hanging around with nothing to do, no deadlines, no steps to retrace; not even a job, no need to work that hustle, no-place to be in fifteen minutes. I had a colloquium to deliver. Would there be time, would there be time? Thursday nights, English 635’s class discussions focus on racial and gender oppression, which is just as important as it is tedious. This week was no exception, since many main characters are Jamaican & south Asian. After the break I quietly whipped out the laptop. Jimbo - one-third of our discussion fellowship - hadn’t shown up that night, but he IMed me from home.

The Opera Ghost: sup, yo. are you guys on break, or out of class?
The Hour Badly Spent: just got back from break. we’re on 1 last q
The Hour Badly Spent: this is actually not so bad
The Opera Ghost: what? oh questions?
The Hour Badly Spent: yeah
The Opera Ghost: im sick, btw.
The Hour Badly Spent: we heard :-)
The Hour Badly Spent: flu?
The Opera Ghost: yea.
The Opera Ghost: sad thing is my roommates are still trying to drag me out tonight.
The Opera Ghost: i think i may die if that happens.
The Hour Badly Spent: just bundle up and travel in a palanquin
The Opera Ghost: lol
The Opera Ghost: with a big wooden jug of brandy around my neck
The Hour Badly Spent: if u make me laugh karin [westman] might be pissed
The Opera Ghost: lol sorry
The Hour Badly Spent: ok, got it outta my system. must. stop. thinking of you as friar tuck.
The Opera Ghost: LOL

Whatever; it was funny. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

Then Karin snapped me back to the there-and-now, asking us about the genetically engineered Futuremouse© that brings White Teeth to its climax. Something occurred to me.

"Did anyone else see this as a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?" Karin asked me to expound on the connection.

Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on.
In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth.

Indeed.

 No problem, Lammle’s Santa Monica Theatre. We’ll continue to deposit our feces at the same place we always do: this blog.

Few things are more awkward than when a girl brings her friends with her on a date. Like backup in case the evening goes south, and the guy knows it. Saturday night I got to be one of those judgemental cockblockers; Ariana was meeting a soldier for drinks at Mae’s, and she invited everyone along with her.

As soon as I went down the stairs, I was greeted by a bunch of reporters in red T-Shirts. The Collegionnaires were pubcrawling tonight! "Hey, come with us across the street to Pat’s" said Brett King. Hey Brett & Co., just because I may have, on occasion, posted a few unflattering comments about  a tiny portion of your writings, this does not mean we can’t be friends, right?

They looked like they were having fun. And I did want to go with them, badly. Nevertheless, I had made a promise to Ariana. You know that I’m like the least manly person you know? That’s true, but it’d be great to have you there anyway. Besides, I really want you to meet him. By the time I showed up (an hour fashionably late), everyone was already drunk and surprisingly huggy - Ariana (felt good!), Cate (felt good!), Carolyn (felt good!), Cherry (slightly awkward!).

I spent an hour or so floating between Ariana, Ariana’s date, and Carolyn, who was kind of down because the football player she was seeing got mad at her for no apparent reason and slammed a door on her foot. That’s a definite no-no. He’s supposed to do that to the other team’s girlfriends!

When the soldier went to the bathroom, Ariana turned to me. You’re not trying to get with Carolyn are you?

Probably not, I said, drinking something that was in front of me. I’m not really in a flirty mood, and besides, my type looks and sounds much more like Ariana (reddish hair!) than Carolyn (skinny & blonde).

And then she hugged me again. Why is she so huggy tonight?

So how are you, The Hour Badly Spent? Her vowels are normally long anyway. Tonight all her small talk comes out like singing.
Super!
You know you can talk to me.
About what?
About anything. I search out her eyes. Maybe she really does want to get to know the real me.
How drunk are you?

By this time, Cherry had surrounded herself with guys, all of them much older and taller than her. One of them was like 50. Looking at her daddy issues on display from across the bar, I couldn’t help but feel cold and dark inside, like I was watching a puppy in a ritual sacrifice, except I can’t tell who’s the puppy and who’s the knife-wielding priest, who exactly is fucking whom, and maybe they are all victims with no predators or maybe they are all predators with no victims or maybe it’s just extreeemely creepy seeing some kid with old guys floating around her like stormclouds. If they’re going to swarm and compete to stroke this girl’s ego, why not just put their dicks on a chessboard? That’s a game I could play, because I get erect in an L-pattern.

At any rate, I settled into a booth, just sort of fading into the scenery. Ariana’s talking to her date. Carolyn left a while ago. Cherry’s doing whatever it is she does with clusters of older guys. I could sit here forever. I could also just go.

So I did.

Outside I tried to catch up with the Collegiannaires. How sick is it that although they’re snotty red-staters I really wanted to drink with them? The streets were full of people, cigarette butts, and vomit. There were purple T-shirts. Baseball caps. Girls with short skirts, long legs. Douchebag guys with their douchebag friends. A girl, frantically crying and pleading to an annoyed cop; her friend being responsible, "Christina, settle down. He’s not gonna do anything." No journalists. Starting with Pat’s, I went from bar to bar (the back of O’Malley’s smelled like gin and semen), skipping the ones with cover charges, peering through and around girls with impossibly clear skin, wriggling around more baseball caps, more short skirts, more long legs, more purple tees. Still no reporters. I went back into Mae’s and told Ariana that I was heading home.